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Biden: LaGuardia like third world country

“I respect the vice president, but I think his comments were inappropriate,” the Democratic mayor said at a news conference, according to Time magazine. “LaGuardia, obviously, needs an upgrade. But that being said, the airport manages an extraordinary amount of traffic, and the people who work there make it work under very difficult circumstances.”

During his remarks Thursday at Philadelphia’s 30th Street Train Station to unveil Amtrak’s electric locomotive, Biden said that U.S. airports leave much to be desired, specifically calling out LaGuardia.

“If I blindfolded someone and took him at 2 o’clock in the morning into the airport in Hong Kong and said, Where do you think you are?’ he’d say, ‘This must be America, it’s a modern airport,’” Biden said. “If I took him blindfolded and took you to LaGuardia Airport in New York, you must think, ‘I must be in some Third World country.’ I’m not joking!”

The vice president also lamented the recent rankings of the U.S. on it’s infrastructure quality, saying the country has fallen 20 spots in the past decade on the World Economic Forum’s ranking.

However, he said he remains optimistic about the future of the nation’s infrastructure and acknowledged his role as “the White House optimist.”

“I used to be talked about as the young idealistic guy who was optimistic, and they now write about me as the White House optimist. As if I’m the guy [who], as my my grandfather form Scranton would say, ‘just fell off the turnip truck yesterday,’” the vice president said.